Risen Magazine Features God Hides in Plain Sight

Risen Magazine is one of the most interesting magazines I’ve come across. I was first turned onto it with their cover story on Alice Cooper. Then on Carlos Santana. Every issue had an interview that fascinated me. They’re interested in culture, faith, love, and the stories are almost all interview in format. It’s like Talk Magazine, only Risen actually makes a point. Here’s the interview editor Chris Ahrens did with me about my new book.

Look Here
Writer: Chris Ahrens

It was as if everything had a point, and it was up to me to get my Burning Bush decoder ring and figure out the specific hidden message God had for me. I don’t do that anymore. I just look for signs of his presence, because I know they are there. He doesn’t hide. I am just blind.

-Dean Nelson, God Hides in Plain Sight

Dean Nelson is seated in front of me. I can see him, hear the warmth of his words and laughter. I am certain he is there, just as I am certain that I am in the room with him. God, according to the scriptures, is also in the room with us. But He can seem harder to locate than His creation. A true seeker, Dean Nelson finds God in a place many Protestants wouldn’t think to look-in a place that many of us non-Catholic abandoned during the Reformation. We may have been a bit hasty in our baby and bathwater discards.

Interviewed exclusively for Risen Magazine in San Diego

Risen Magazine: Why did you choose to write about the sacraments?

Dean Nelson: I think it was Eugene Peterson who said that we talk about God in these veiled references. The sacraments are a way to talk about God without talking about God. We don’t end up talking about God, but the activity of God, the evidence of God, the experience of the sacred.